From the Edges

Cartoons

The NIH Keeps Up With The Times: 1, 2,
3.
David Baltimore Has A Flashback: ***. The NY Times Keeps Up With Times: ***.
The Faith of Anthony Fauci: ***. Anthony Fauci Explains How HIV Causes AIDS: ***.
Robert Gallo on The Force of Ejaculation: ***, on HIV Theory: ***, Lectures in Marseilles: ***.
David Ho Does The Math: ***.
John Mellors Sets the Record Straight: ***.
Bono, el Magnifico, Holds (Another) Press Conference: ***.
Anthony Fauci Explains Journalism in the Age of AIDS: ***.
Anthony Fauci and David Ho Disprove an Old Adage: ***.
Anthony Fauci Explains ICL and AIDS: ***
The CDC Can't Keep Up With The Times:***
The Method of the "Small Inquisitor" Moore:***
The Co-Discovery of a Nobel-Worthy Enzymatic Activity:***
The Revenge of the "Very" Minor Moriarty:***
Julie Gerberding and Anthony Fauci Learn Arithmetic:***
Osama Obama Has a Message for Africa:***

While you're at it, put aside the medical attention you receive, which you're generally happy with, according to most surveys. Instead, immerse yourself in the harrowing statistics: The United States spends $2.1 trillion a year on health care. More than 30 percent of that — about $700 billion — has nothing to do with improving people's health. Instead, it goes to administrative costs and for tests and treatments that aren't necessary.

Unecessary tests and treatments? Who'da thunk?

"The best of the best of our health system is the best in the world," says William R. Brody, president of Johns Hopkins University, who will retire from his post at the end of the year. "But the average is not so hot. We need to do better."

Euphemistically speaking, Yes, the average is " not so hot". Honestly speaking, it's crap, served in a crap sandwich. Bogus tests to scare people and sell toxic, expensive drugs that have so many side effects, you need MORE toxic, expensive drugs!

One way to attack the cost issue while treating patients better is to re-emphasize primary care. Barbara Starfield, a professor at the Bloomberg School, found that when primary care physicians lead medical teams, health improves and costs fall. The more physicians there are, the more mortality is reduced.

December 04, 2008

The problem is that this scam is fast approaching the $1 TRILLION mark in what taxpayers have wasted on AIDS since 1984. As recently as last summer, Congress and President Bush authorized another $48 billion for the alleged “AIDS epidemic” in Africa. But you will see on pages seven and eight that South Africa’s own government reports that AIDS deaths represent less than one percent of all mortality there. That number is also suspect because many companies rely on the AIDS mythology to avoid liability.

November 30, 2008

LONDON (AP) — As World AIDS Day is marked on Monday, some experts are growing more outspoken in complaining that AIDS is eating up funding at the expense of more pressing health needs.

They argue that the world has entered a post-AIDS era in which the disease's spread has largely been curbed in much of the world, Africa excepted.

"AIDS is a terrible humanitarian tragedy, but it's just one of many terrible humanitarian tragedies," said Jeremy Shiffman, who studies health spending at Syracuse University.

Roger England of Health Systems Workshop, a think tank based in the Caribbean island of Grenada, goes further. He argues that UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the fight against the disease, has outlived its purpose and should be disbanded.

"The global HIV industry is too big and out of control. We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake, ... too many relatively well paid HIV staff in affected countries, and too many rock stars with AIDS support as a fashion accessory," he wrote in the British Medical Journal in May.

Paul de Lay, a director at UNAIDS, disagrees. It's valid to question AIDS' place in the world's priorities, he says, but insists the turnaround is very recent and it would be wrong to think the epidemic is under control.

"We have an epidemic that has caused between 55 million and 60 million infections," de Lay said. "To suddenly pull the rug out from underneath that would be disastrous."

U.N. officials roughly estimate that about 33 million people worldwide have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Scientists say infections peaked in the late 1990s and are unlikely to spark big epidemics beyond Africa.

In developed countries, AIDS drugs have turned the once-fatal disease into a manageable illness.

England argues that closing UNAIDS would free up its $200 million annual budget for other health problems such as pneumonia, which kills more children every year than AIDS, malaria and measles combined.

"By putting more money into AIDS, we are implicitly saying it's OK for more kids to die of pneumonia," England said.

His comments touch on the bigger complaint: that AIDS hogs money and may damage other health programs.

By 2006, AIDS funding accounted for 80 percent of all American aid for health and population issues, according to the Global Health Council.

In a 2006 report, Rwandan officials noted a "gross misallocation of resources" in health: $47 million went to HIV, $18 million went to malaria, the country's biggest killer, and $1 million went to childhood illnesses.

"There needs to be a rational system for how to apportion scarce funds," said Helen Epstein, an AIDS expert who has consulted for UNICEF, the World Bank, and others.

AIDS advocates say their projects do more than curb the virus; their efforts strengthen other health programs by providing basic health services.

But across Africa, about 1.5 million doctors and nurses are still needed, and hospitals regularly run out of basic medicines.

Experts working on other health problems struggle to attract money and attention when competing with AIDS.

"Diarrhea kills five times as many kids as AIDS," said John Oldfield, executive vice president of Water Advocates, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes clean water and sanitation.

These competing claims on public money are likely to grow louder as the world financial meltdown threatens to deplete health dollars.

"We cannot afford, in this time of crisis, to squander our investments," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO's director-general, said in a recent statement.

Some experts ask whether it makes sense to have UNAIDS, WHO, UNICEF, the World Bank, the Global Fund plus countless other AIDS organizations, all serving the same cause.

"I do not want to see the cause of AIDS harmed," said Shiffman of Syracuse University. But "For AIDS to crowd out other issues is ethically unjust."

De Lay argues that the solution is not to reshuffle resources but to boost them.

"To take money away from AIDS and give it to diarrheal diseases or onchocerciasis (river blindness) or leishmaniasis (disfiguring parasites) doesn't make any sense," he said. "We'd just be doing a worse job in everything else."